don't be normal

Illuminate the pages of my book with your mellow

light, understand me, respect me, care about me. 

Open the door to your heart, let me in, let me be happy

vicariously. As we grow older, more mature, busier 

even then, I will be by your side. 

You can wonder if this is the truth. It is, 

otherwise I would not write it. I would not lie. 

Understand this, if all else confused you: I am yours. 

What has happened, 

where did all the joy go? You tell yourself: 

you are not a victim. 

This is life for everyone. 

Suck it up. 

But it doesn't change the way you feel. 

They say that it will pass, and I think we will too, 

because of the severity of our rigid views. 

But maybe in the meantime, 

I can hope to be the same again, 

I can hope to feel the joy of the sun on my skin, 

or feel nostalgia when the clouds cry rain; 

I can wish to be surrounded by kindness 

and not dismissal, 

and I can pray that all of it passes, all but us. 

I am nothing

There is always a screen. A translucent film separating us; a bubble with a rainbow on its surface. Beautiful. Tragic. Laughs that echo within, cheeks rosy from the laughter, or is it just a reflection from the screen? Pause. Reflect. Which one of these are your true friends? The film keeps caving in on me. Until it becomes me. I am the screen. I am the film. I am the bubble. I am the shield. Until it consumes me. Now, what am I? I am nothing.

would you look down upon me too?

Suddenly, everything is surreal. 

Issues of the mind are real. 

As real as you are. 

But you think they only exist in one's mind. 

What if I told you that they existed in me?

That forced disinterest is real?

That falling into an empty pit, within me, is real?

That what I write about it true?

That I wish I could cry instead of losing my ability to feel?

Would you look down upon me too? 

dsme2011 year 2 midterm

I am capable of so much more, 

I am not what they think I am, 

or who I should be; 

when my ears started to ring

and my breath was like a blink, 

I knew I could have avoided it

had I have been more hardworking. 

I can't undo my mistakes. 

Now I know where I went wrong. 

The entire night passed by

and all I could do was cry, 

having gone to bed with a terrible heartache, 

a feeling I never want to feel again. 

Having woken up feeling 

my heart wake up in pain, 

that is something I never 

want to feel again. 

Maybe I do truly love you

As I sit in my UGFN1000 tutorial, silently typing away, thinking about you, about us, our future, about what you said about trust, the wind slithers in from under the door and I say to it "Take me with you". 

I cannot focus in class anyway, I am thinking about how continually I break down and rebuild myself. And I wonder if we will truly bind the way you said we would.

It is hard for me to trust, as it is for anyone, but I have been opening up my heart to you. I wish you feel the same way, but I will not ask you to feel pressured into doing so. If your dreams tell you to be wary, then be wary. If your heart tells you one thing and your brain tells you another, then think with your brain and feel with your heart. Love me, love me cautiously if you will. 

After the chaos of our days, I find myself drawn to feeling grounded with you. After everything the day has had to offer, I need my alone time. Alone time with you. And I would need it day after day after day. 

I want to watch the sunrise with you right next to me, and I want us to walk in the wind at midnight. I want to experience everything with you. 

You make me a better person. 

Sometimes I feel like I am the sunlight that paints my wall golden in the morning, I am the strange silver feather under my bed, I am the crunchy leaf scraping the ground in symphony with the wind, I am the flaccid pink flower that has a weird cylindrical shlong, I am the rain that comes in from your window, I am the carpet in front of my door, but when I am with you, I am simply, quite simply, just me. 

I am fearful of admitting this, but maybe I do truly love you. 

mad

hopefully

my time doesn't go

disrespected

in more ways than one; 

hopefully

you see that 

consideration

plays a big part 

in how we grow:

to be closer

or further apart. 

do i want to be happy or do i want to be in pain?

I hope this 

feeling of disappointment is not 

everlasting

even though it is real. 

Like how every minute of

depression feels like an hour, and

every bout of madness consumes 

all but itself.

dare I wait for temporary joy?

But sadness drives one, 

instills a rage that crushes their

spirits, 

that makes them break. 

So... do I want to be happy

or do I want to be in pain?

i love this

Iridescent view from the blinking of an eye, 

like being high, but only healthier, sustainable, 

I finally feel the warmth of the sun on my skin. 

Kajal, or kohl, lightly marking my water line,

extra highlighter on the tip of my nose:

"Youth", they say, "finally caught up with you."

Oh, but I am only 19, so I have the 

urge to punch them. Let me enjoy the view. 

silent house

It's not a good thing that instead of 
scolding and incessant talks, 

the radio speaks to cover the silence; 

it sounds strained: is it feeling uncomfortable?

It creates noise in a room

where living beings create none. 

Ironic, isn't it, how non-living things 

appear to be the only constituents

of a house that was meant to be a home? 

Typhoon 8

The waiting starts as the typhoon does, the cover of my book: 
a bright turquoise green, a splash of neon pink, 
(as I write this, our song starts playing through my headphones, it makes me sad). 
My door is slightly ajar, my back faces it, 
I glance up at every passing shadow, I beckon
but none of them are you, so I continue reading Flowers for Algernon.  
The wind picks up and at least I'm not alone anymore, 
although I would rather be, because the wind is not kind, 
the wind mocks me for having no self respect, 
for valuing communication while not being communicated to, 
so I check my phone again, there are many people dangling 
but none of them are you, so as you leave me, 
I leave them hanging. 
My interactions with the people closest to me 
remind me never to have expectations, 
but to not have expectations means I will never get to let people in, 

and I wanted to let you in. 

yeah

A curious cub stepping

into the pond--

ripples in the sea it sees

itself.

Who is it? Another cub 

in the reflection, 

a partner? Perhaps

they have only just met. 

The ripples settle, clarity 

sets in,

the cub sees in itself 

a new light. 

and that is well deserved

The reflection 

it's ugly

an ugly heart. 

The exterior 

it could be pretty 

but it doesn't matter

not at the start anyway. 

I am not as good

as one may think. 

Here

so lonely 

well deserved. 

Here

so sad

well deserved. 

There I see

a beautiful home

a beautiful one

though alone 

and I am not there

and that is well deserved 

fall out

Maybe one day I’ll look back and not even remember how much I used to think about you, maybe I’ll only remember the good bits, the bit where you’re one of my friends, where life is a bed of roses and we are the reddest, brightest petals. Maybe I won’t remember how you are the last thing that goes through my mind every night. I won’t remember how I’m consumed by a feeling I can only visually describe as a flutter of white feathers from fluffy pillows exploding when I talk to you. Maybe I won’t remember staying up on Saturday nights expecting your call or lying on the cold marble floor outside my bedroom only to talk to you. I probably won’t remember that you told me you wanted to talk to me every time you felt sad. And I definitely won’t remember how much I wanted to hug you and hold your hand every time I was with you. Yes I am biased and yes I feel something. I don’t know what it is and I don’t need to name it either. Not naming it means I will probably definitely not remember it years later. Maybe. Hopefully. Because even though it has no name, it has an adjective: “unrequited”, and I can’t let future me remember an insanely intense feeling only as being unrequited.

peace is wading in the water

Peace is wading in the water,

surrounded by heavy arms pulled down by large oars,

it’s the unsynchronised movement slowing you down,

it’s watching the bubbles in the water,

it’s wearing a bright vest and looking shorter.

Happiness, though, is thinking about it afterwards,

but by afterwards I mean a few years later,

how I know this

I don’t know.

So it is also watching your friends talk,

and dead crabs walk,

and racing to the dock,

and it is takin your gear off and leaping in,

it is achieving half a pull up,

it is turning your boat over,

and it is struggling to snorkel.

It’s your friends making it rain,

and then it’s the actual sky in pain,

and it is someone fulfilling their goals,

and it is falling down dreamy holes,

as in dying of hunger and listening to music,

and ordering food and feeling too sick,

and thinking

hey, we’re living the college life.

a note that feels incomplete

If I had to name this, I wouldn't say it was sadness, this thing that comes knocking at my door. It felt like grief at first, for a life that could've been happier, or for the life that I once had. It's not as if that life was not riddled with sadness either, but after 2019, it just felt like my roots were uprooted. What is a person with no roots? Only a living thing. Only surviving matter. 

compassion is a weakness

 I just wanted to mean something. 
Come into their lives as a flicker of happiness, 

maybe hope: 

don't die, life is worth living. 

If I could make them feel alive, I would feel alive too, 

so that's a selfish purpose. So I am selfish. 

So what?

The good deeds don't mean much, 

when your own don't believe it. So why will you?

You're not good. This is the truth. 

I drew, wrote, immortalized them, 

so what? They don't want to be kept alive by me. 

They don't want me. 

You don't mean anything to them. 

They don't understand you. 

Because they don't want to. 

It's not your fault. 

It's not my fault. Compassion is a weakness. 

I'm weak. So

what?

What now?

I should go.

nobody was truly home

Radiohead, radio in my head, 

while my eyes droop in the bus, I 

am tired tonight, I

am sad too. 

I don’t want to go home, I 

want alcohol to wash over

my mind, numb me 

from reality. 

The younger ran away, 

the oldest panicked, 

the giver of life, well 

she used the knife, bled 

her wrist artery, she

died. 

I pushed open the door, 

found my mother on the floor, 

nobody was home. 

I stood there, the door was ajar, 

would her cut leave a scar? 

I reached for the phone 

but it was too far, 

so I took the same knife 

and stabbed until I

touched my bone, then nobody was

truly home. 

Nobody was truly home.

absolut vodka

You wish you knew me earlier. You told me you felt safe with me. My arm supported your back as your head rested right above my heart. I felt my pulse grow steadier as I listened to your heart beat and you listened to mine. (In Hindi we call it dhak dhak and that is what I felt when I held you.) 

You said we should ignore each other next month but live in this moment fully now. I did. I remember how happy it made me feel. 

I don’t want materialistic love, I just want your company. I too felt safe with you, right there in that moment, I wish I could live in it forever. I felt greater than infinite yet less than nothing. 

I felt fluid and I 

felt happy. 

Thank you for that. 

 

i am tired

Please don’t call me / I am tired / the birds are chirping outside / they’re awake but I have not slept yet / I am tired / please go ahead and blow your smoke all over my face / maybe this second hand vapor will kill me / I hope it will / I am tired / pour me shot over shot / it is in inebriation that I feel like I can breathe / an excuse to be myself / I am not drunk / I am tired / I am tired / please don’t call me / I am okay / I am just tired

persecutory delusional disorder

You're out there to get me, aren't you?

"I really care about you"

you only say that when you appear to be inebriated, 

but you just want me to open up, don't you?

Waiting for me to spill my secrets, building a case against me, 

plotting every move along the way, 

down to the last second... 

Is it true that you hate me

because you don't know my secrets?

I know it maddens you

when you realize that all we talked about

in the past 126 minutes

is you. 

I know that day in the train 

when you told me you trusted me,

you realized how you finally let your guard down for someone. 

How could you let that happen?

Surely I must have used my dirty tricks

to pry your secrets out of you. 

Right?

So now you show me how you supposedly care about m

tell me things you say you never tell anyone

tell me that the littlest of my words have the power to upset you

tell me that you call me first and then others,

but really you're just waiting, aren't you?

Waiting for me to be vulnerable, 

waiting to capitalize on every feeling of mine, 

ready to pounce with your claws sharpened by my trust, 

planning to make me hurt. 

That will be your victory?

Knowing that someone who cared about you

only got hurt in the end, 

and instead of love, all you did was pretend?

Is this true?

Or am I the one who's scared of trust, 

of love?

Am I finding a reason to believe that

I am unlovable?

Maybe you truly love me. 

Maybe I am only delusional. 

do you ever sleep?

 Morning: the best part of the day my therapist said, “just get your mornings right”.

So the next day I wake up and step out of my bed. Hey, my therapist told me this could cure me. I see the sun rays shining through my eye lashes. That’s saying something because my eye lashes are short. I don’t have to force myself to drink water and get out because I want to see her proven right. Please be right.

I take my yoga mat and AirPods, I go downstairs and feel the gentle breeze displacing my bangs. My bangs that I had cut short and uneven in rage. My bangs that I had tried to force into the high bun. The high bun that was pulling on the strands of my hair, threatening to pull back my hairline.

I take a moment to appreciate the weather and the sky. Goddamn… Okay, done.

I start stretching. My PE teacher told me to hold every static stretch for 15 seconds, but I find myself too restless and impatient as I fly from one pose to another in mere seconds. Sorry.

Let’s exercise. Build those abs again. Grow that—as they say it—booty.

Three minutes into the workout… Oh, I see flashes. I see stars before my eyes. My head spins. I see blackness. But I can feel the sun on my skin. Why is it dark? Stop playing dumb. You skip meals all the time. You survive on chocolates and milk. What did you expect would happen? Sorry.

I promise I’ll do better now. I’ve taken the first step already, look, I’m out of the bed in the morning.

I feel something. Stop feeling.

As nighttime rolls in, I have crossed off no tasks from my list. I have only wasted time.

“Hey, do you want to drink tonight?”

Let’s drink tonight. So I drink. From drowning in sadness to drowning my sadness in vodka, there must be a beauty in this that my therapist can appreciate. Right?

But I find sadness alive and thriving at the bottom of my glass.

I never left flowers for our friendship because it's not dead to me

I used to be able to express myself clearly but for the past few months, I find myself at a loss for words. I cannot speak because what I feel and what I think are entirely different and make no sense. 

I would give a lot to have you as my best friend again, but things just don't work that way. What was our flop era as friends is now the peak. 

I know I'm not as verbally affectionate as I should be and I am sorry for that. When you told me you wondered if you really meant anything to me, I was flabbergasted. Of course, you mean a lot to me. I have told you a lot of times that you are one of the best people I have known. I still think that our friendship is at least in the Top 3 friendships of my entire life. 

So what if we fight a little now? So what if we don't call as we used to? play as we used to? tell each other almost everything as we used to? 

We were in school back then. Things were easier. We weren't countries apart. We didn't have our own things going on.

Are you a priority? Maybe you think you're not because I don't text you ever so often, and that's on me. But would you like to know why? 

It's because I, just like you, also think about what we used to be and what we are now, and when we do text it seems superficial, the beta version of who we could be, and that upsets me.

So what if I don't cry? I still feel terrible. Is that what you want to know? That the person you are thinking about is thinking about you too? 

I am sorry for everything. I truly am. 

Sometimes I think that maybe one day after I am done with my bachelor's and you are done with yours, we could meet again. We could be neighbors and do the things we said we would do. Go hike, go bike, hang out every other day. And then we could be happy. If I had a choice I would pick this for sure. 

I know it can't happen but thinking about it makes me feel, and now I hope it makes you feel something too. 

Leaving flowers behind on the grave of my past

Leaving flowers behind on the grave of my past. 

Nobody talks about how you are still in as much pain as you always were having lost someone you loved deeply. They don't talk about it because nobody believes it. They ask you to move on. Come on, get a grip, they've been dead for two years now. Five years now. A decade now. But no matter how long it has been, it always hurts. Every single day. But you can't talk about it because people will either therapize you with a drizzle of pity or they will pretend they care. So you carry that pain on your heart until you die. 

I carry that pain not with me, but in me. Right there in the center of my heart. I must, because if I do not, I risk losing all our memories. But those memories drive me... they make me who I am. I just cannot lose them. So I keep the memories and I keep the pain. 

I need to stop dancing with the illusions in my head, the ones like shadows of a glass painting. It is all fiction: I have built an idea, a character, and I have loved it as I would love the person in real life. 

He is an idea, he is an illusion, and as we clink our glasses and celebrate our four-and-a-half-year anniversary in my mind, he chugs down beer at a pub with his new friends in his new life, in real life. I keep thinking what if, what if I told him exactly how I felt instead of closing off, what if I told him exactly how cute the pendant was, exactly how happy the idea of mango shake made me, exactly how much everything he did meant to me. Would things have been different? Who knows, so I play out happier endings in my mind. 

Some people put their faith in actions and some in words. I put mine in the latter. So when he said he would never stop caring about me, I believed him. When he said he loved me, the new me, the old me, I believed him. When he told me we would never drift apart, I believed him. But then he switched to another lane so quick and I fell sideways by inertia. 

All the words I had built myself upon fell to the ground slowly, as if it were a movie, like snowflakes fall from the sky. No, I do not blame anyone. I hate to hold grudges. So I tried to stay friends... But just as I do not deserve to go crazy because of these once uttered words, he does not deserve to have me in his life. Maybe he left because I was holding him back too. Either way, it will never be fair of me to drag him into the mess I have made in my mind. So I will not. 

I always go back to read old chats, be it with family or friends or lovers. As I regard each word with the faith only a strong-willed idiot would, I fall deeper into the spiral of my mind. So today, I decided to run a psychological experiment. Instead of reading old text messages, why don't I delete my discord account? Instagram? Facebook? Even WhatsApp? Will it work? Come on Soberly Drunk, let's do it for the sake of science. Let's see if this can fix your insanity. Cut off everything that tethers you to the past. 

So I'll do it. I will drag along not a single soul from my old life because they don't deserve the garbage that I bring into their lives. 

There's a flower for everyone. I am so grateful I had wonderful, amazing school friends. There are some high school memories I will never forget, especially the feeling of school being my second home. I'm also extremely grateful for the guy I loved, with whom I shared a wholesome experience despite everything else. I'm thankful for the friendship that bloomed online with the guy I would say was my bestest friend ever, the one with the purest heart and the one I felt the happiest with. I'm also grateful for the girl I was sure would be my BFF whom I love a lot still. There are more flowers for everyone and everything else I didn't mention. 

I am not okay now, but one day I will be. And then I can truly look back with fondness and gratitude, and not just pain. 

look beyond what you see

And when I look at skyline, I try to look beyond what I see / I see the trace of clouds / but beyond what I see, I feel the rush of the wind dying into a breeze / I hear the sea embracing the rocks / I feel the lightness of clouds / I peer into the beyond and I see / two strong pillars and a loving group of three / that’s my hakuna matata / a place of no worries

can I look at myself?

I could walk away now, as I have done before, 

but if I feel the slightest of worry for you

I will come back; 

if you are truly by yourself, 

you know deep down

I have always got your back. 

I used to ask myself why I don't "move on", 

but that's not true because I have;

I shouldn't hate myself for caring about you,

just because you don't, doesn't mean I can't. 

In fact, that I care only makes me better, 

that I am compassionate only builds me deeper.

Although these values have brought me sadness, 

at the right time, they will beget greatness. 

I tell myself that being good isn't foolish, 

just be proud to look at yourself in the abyss. 

Mao mao

I feel very detached today. 

I was watching kids play in the park, 

but it overwhelmingly smelled like dog poop. 

I was wondering in the back of my mind

why the other people couldn’t smell it too.

I thought I’d be happy to eat choco-chip egg puffs, 

I was wrong.

Then I went to the thrift store

and even though everything was amazing, 

I was not. 

Hoping to raise my spirits, I bought a chocolate, 

but I still could not. 

It can’t be fatigue, 

I barely did anything today, 

a friend wanted to hang out

but I had no words to say. 

My mind feels fuzzy 

yet devoid of thoughts right now; 

I’m trying hard, but all I can remember 

is that cats are called mao mao. 

1224

Not a great thing to feel at the beginning of the year

I have realized something today. 

Truth be told, I realized it long ago, but I shoved the thought in the back of my mind and asked it to shut up. I said to myself, "This is not true. This is just your excessive thinking." I repeatedly told myself to look at things from your point of view: life was hard for you, it is completely acceptable for you not to think of me. 

But now I know that you just don't care about me. 

You used to. There is no denying that. Perhaps you didn't have the best ways to communicate it but I saw it. In the once-in-a-lifetime-sent letter you'd written to me. In the way you tried to be there for me when I was stressed. In the "hate ya, love ya" back-and-forths. In the "miss ya" confessions. 

Every time you'd disappear from my life, I would text you, I would be worried about you, and then you'd apologize. You'd tell me how you feel terrible but you were going through something so you could not keep in touch. Yet you could stay in touch with other friends. I knew that, then why did I keep welcoming you back with open arms? 

I believed your reasons. I told you we'd always be friends. 

I never wanted you to take the blame because you already blamed yourself enough for everything and I just could not add to the list. So I believed that it was just your circumstance. It was just me being selfish for wanting a friend to reciprocate the love and care I gave them. It was just natural and the universe was to blame and the stars were to blame and the gods were to blame and I was to blame, but not you, no I would not allow that.

But now I see what has happened. You have done nothing but take me for granted the past two years. I have been there for you no matter how hard it has been for me, and you have done nothing but leave me again and again and again and again and again and again. 

I think I deserved more from this friendship. I don't think I want to give it another chance now. It will rip my heart into pieces to say goodbye to one of the friends that I have loved the most in my life but... you never loved me so. 

I keep thinking that maybe the intensity of your struggle was stronger than the intensity to check up on me, maybe you were thinking so much that there was no space left in your mind to think of me, your best friend of years, and maybe you were so busy that you couldn't commit to a long-distance friendship. 

But if I could, why couldn't you? There is only one explanation. I cared about you too much and you cared about me too little. 

As I sit here and write this, I feel so upset, so hurt. I try not to cry. I don't want to cry. But I know that I treated you better than the best, and I loved you and cared for you, and I could never deserve what you gave me in return. 

I could not close this letter even if I wanted to. It should be abrupt, exactly the way you cut me off from your life. 

You were the greatest love of mine, the kind that happens once in a lifetime. We could have made a great couple if only we both held on. I know you had tried and I know I made it hard, harder than it should have been. If only I could let my guard down, if only I wasn't scared of intimacy, I wouldn't be writing this now.

I never told you why I was reserved. You thought it was something about you. It was, but not in the way you thought. It was never something bad about you. I was scared of the power you had. You held my heart in your hands and it gave you the power of breaking me completely. I was so scared of that. I was scared of how much I loved you. I was scared that you didn't love me back. 

I know you would never hurt me. And I know that when you did crush my heart, it was only because I drove you to it. I regret not trying harder. I think about it every night, and every night I wish I could just accept what happened and turn the page over. But I can't. I guess I just feel disappointed in how things turned out to be. 

You were the greatest love of mine, and I let you slip.